Ants and Cookie Crumbs
by mholub00
Summary: There are reporters crawling around her apartment building, ants to the cookie crumbs of her tragically deceptive life. (CAP 2 SPOILERS-ish) (One-shot)


There are reporters crawling around her apartment building, ants to the cookie crumbs of her tragically deceptive life.

Her address was in her file, the file currently accessible by any five year old who can open an internet tab, so she's not surprised and stays in the shadows of the building across the street.

She could get inside, easily, with none the wiser except maybe her neighbor's cat, but the exhaustion waves through her body once more. The mood to slink around rooftops and slide through windows has taken a vacation, so instead she double checks the gun tucked under her t-shirt, pulls the hood over her head and the jacket tighter, and disappears in the opposite direction.

She can't be an enigma anymore, can't be a silent shadow. Sure, no one knows how she ticks (that _true_ knowledge is reserved to two people, and one of them is dead), but the world's access to a fair amount of the trouble she's seen makes her uncomfortable. And vulnerable. And if anyone ever got within range to ask questions, she'd have to be honest.

None of which, she admits, she's ready for just yet.

She can't remain a mystery, and it's a foreign feeling.

Floating with the darkness, she ghosts to the far side of the city, where the apartment building that has become her real safe haven, her second home and maybe her actual one, stalks the silent night.

There are no reporters here; she smirks. The computer related accident that had resulted in deleting all records of that entire file had gotten them grounded for weeks, but Fury had never bothered to replace the information.

Hawkeye remains anonymous, a face behind fancy sunglasses and a flashy smile, and for once she's glad he has the upper hand at something.

She has a key to his apartment and she fishes it from her pocket as she relinquishes her shadows and approaches the door to the building, practically runs all seven flights of stairs.

No lights go on, too risky, and she whispers around the rooms, amassing what she needs and what she wants from various hiding places: bottle of water, granola bar, small flash light, handgun, disposable cell phone, book of Shel Silverstein poetry.

Feeling too exposed in the windowed bedroom, she vouches to drag his comforter and blankets and pillows into the much more private and easily defendable bathroom and cushions the tub, hunkering down amid the overly purple collection of comfort.

The gun is clicked to safety and held tightly in one hand and, drowning in the violet ocean, she takes a deep breath. And then another.

The last weeks come crashing down, a collapsing building of emotion, but she can't pinpoint the dominant feeling. "Confused" and "panicked" mix slowly with "sore" and "overworked" and produce her only conscious conclusion: that she is tired.

Her eyelids grow heavy and she knows it's not really safe to sleep, it might never be safe to sleep again, but her resolve crumbles and she allows her sight to slither to black.

When the world is truly closed off, the bullet train hits her: she's afraid.

Frightened, scared.

Her life has been built on secrets and suddenly, with the walls of her prisoned past torn down and left with nothing but the truth, she's lacking the answer of what to do next, and she's afraid of not knowing.

This is not something she's trained for.

The confusion and anxiety and ache and fatigue are separating out into separate emotions again and she pulls the blankets closer, tighter. They smell like him, and it's calming. Black coffee and gravel dust and bow strings and guitar music with soft, careful words.

He would know what to do, she thinks as she relinquishes her grip on consciousness; it's not the first time in the last week that she's wished he was here, with her. Wished he was an arm to lean on and a voice to trust instead of only a silver necklace, cool against her skin.

He would know what to do, and everything would be okay.


End file.
